The fire was already built when Batu arrived.
Buqa had been at it before the morning began, which was his practice for any rite that required the fire to be at a specific temperature when the ceremony opened.
He was crouched at its near side adjusting the central stones when Batu came through the entrance, and he did not look up. The fire was his domain in this space and acknowledged no hierarchy above it.
The ger had a particular smell. Someone on Buqa's staff had laid fresh grass across the floor before the fire went in, and the heat had drawn the scent out of it, and underneath that was the smell of the offerings at the fire's right side.
Rendered fat in a ceramic vessel. A skin of airag. A small bundle of dried herbs that had traveled from somewhere south of the Silk Road and whose name Batu did not know, but which had been in Buqa's ceremony kit since before he arrived in the west.
